240 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 
and patience can effect upon the most unpromising creatures ; and even 
Mr. Forster might have wondered to see it come out of the glass bottle 
where it lives, eat sugar from its master’s fingers, allow him to stroke its 
striped back, and fly round and round his head, returning always to its 
home in the bottle. At first, says its distinguished educator, it was 
“rather too ready with its sting,” but now it never thinks of unsheathing 
the tiny rapier at its tail ; and nobody who saw the insect could doubt 
that its nature had been greatly changed. 
A PLAGUE of butterflies is a rare occurrence. A short time ago, how- 
ever, the town of Florence was invaded by a prodigious quantity of these 
insects. All the distance of the Long’arno between the Piazza Manin and 
the Barriera and in all the adjacent streets the passage was almost 
obstructed by an extraordinary quantity of butterflies that had swarmed 
in such thick clouds round the gaslights that the streets were compar- 
atively dark. Fires were immediately lighted by order of the 
Municipality and by private citizens, in which the butterflies burnt their 
wings, so that half an hour afterwards one walked on a layer formed by 
the bodies of the butterflies an inch thick !!! They were of a whitish 
colour, and some of the streets appeared as if covered with snow, at least © 
so say the Italian papers. —WVature. 
Our ANNUAL ReEpoRT.—We expect to be able to mail to each of our 
members a copy of the Annual Report of the Entomological Society of 
Ontario to the Department of Agriculture for 1872, sometime during the 
month of January, 1873. It will treat of insects injurious to the straw- 
berry, grape, potato, hop, and maple. There will also be a chapter on 
beneficial insects, and a short history of some of our more common 
innoxious insects, all illustrated as far as possible by suitable figures. | 
PIERIS VERNALIS.—Mr. G. M. Dodge writes us from Illinois that on 
October 16th and r9th, 1872, he captured two male specimens of this 
butterfly, but that the cold weather then coming on, he saw no more. He 
enquires if it is not a little remarkable that this species should occur in 
the fall? and if the fact does not militate against the idea entertained 
that vernalis is the spring brood of ?. protodice.—E. B. R. 
THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST.—T have a few bound copies of the 
two volumes of this periodical, which I will send post-paid by mail upon 
receipt of $3.50 per volume, or $6.50 for both. Address C. V. RILEY, 
Room 29, Insurance Building, St. Louis, Mo. 
